Birmingham News Super Senior: Gadsden City's Dre Kirkpatrick is No. 1

The best high school football player in Alabama peered into the stands during a practice pause at Gadsden City High this month.

Dre Kirkpatrick, the nation's top cornerback prospect, spotted his girl, Leonta Dill, and waved. Then he slapped the hand of a toddler who had made his way down the Titans Stadium steps.

The player whom every major recruiting service considers the best player in the state is that boy's father. He changes diapers. Tickle fights on the bed are his go-to move to get an energetic boy to take a nap.

Dre Kirkpatrick will turn 19 in October. His son, Dre Jr., turned 2 in June. Kirkpatrick may be the only five-star prospect who changed his course in life better than he changes direction on a football field.

"He's made me proud the way he's handled all of this," said the Rev. Charles Kirkpatrick, his father. "He's shown me something, making something out of a situation that could have cost him his future," Dre's father said. "He's been a good father to that boy. He's made the time to stay in his life."

That will affect his college decision too. He loves what coach Pete Carroll has to say about USC.

Southern Cal is one of the colleges he is considering, but he wonders about the distance from his son.

"I already think about getting out there and looking around and not seeing my little man around anywhere," Dre Kirkpatrick said.

Changed his life:

Kirkpatrick comes from a neighborhood where his mother can cite a couple of his early friends who saw their lives swallowed up by the streets. They found the wrong places and wrong influences and now they no longer come around her house.

Birmingham News Super Senior Dre Kirkpatrick

Kirkpatrick uses words like "key" and "trigger" to describe the attitude change brought about by having a son.

He realizes that having a child at that age could have ruined all his other plans.

"I would not say everyone should do what I did. I jeopardized my future," he said.

Kirkpatrick says he's thankful for great parents - Charles and Kim - who helped him remain a football player.

"I've got great coaches too," he said. "They understand. I couldn't be what my son needs if it wasn't for my parents and our coaches."

Kim, who guessed Leonta was pregnant before being told, sees the good, even though she was stubborn and upset over it at first.

"We tell him everything happens for a reason," she said. "What reason there was for my son to have a child when he was still a child, I didn't know at the time. But I see now there was good out of this having to happen."

Kirkpatrick does more than think it.

"Little man was the spark for me to change my life," he said. "When it first happened, I was sick for a week. I thought, there it went - my football, my smooth life. It all, I thought, was gone. Poof. I was thinking now I had to get a job."

Maturity found him while he was cradling something else besides a football.

"I finally realized my life was no longer about me," he said. "It was about making the best I could out of me for my son. Other guys my age want to make it. They want to be the best for the spotlight. I've got to be different so I can make it. I've got to make it for little man."

The unplanned pregnancy meant a change of behavior.

"I'd still be on the run out there if he hadn't come along. Before him, I was messing out with girls. Girl here. Girl there. Hanging out with friends all night. I could still be that. But I'm not."

Dill, who was a friend of Kirkpatrick's before the pregnancy, saw the change, too.

"Dre was at the point he needed to slow down," she said. "He needed this change."

What colleges think:

Recruiters could talk about his recovery speed, or how Kirkpatrick has gyros for hips that belong on a 5-foot-9 kid, not someone who's almost 6-foot-3.

They could discuss his jams at the line that nearly chop receivers down, or how he started dissecting college technique films and stopped living off natural ability.

But they tend instead to talk about Dre Kirkpatrick off the field. They know he worked at McDonald's. They know he has a child.

"They are all like `How do you have time to be this good and do the camps and things and still have a child and be this good of a football player?'" he said. "They wonder how I have the time to work on football and manage it."

They're impressed that he can. That's why the big-name college football coaches of this era have filled his mailbox with so much mail, it cried uncle.

"I just wore down over the course of time," Charles Kirkpatrick said. "Everybody was sending those thick things and the mailman crams it all up in there. I guess I've got to get a new mailbox at Lowe's."

Kirkpatrick says he's wide open about his college choice, and won't decide until after the season. The schools he mentions most often are Alabama, Florida State, Texas and USC.

Kirkpatrick mentions Alabama's Nick Saban as someone who talks to him about life, not football. He brought up new Texas defensive coordinator Will Muschamp. He speaks of those men with respect, but another story he shared stands out. It's about former Alabama offensive coordinator Major Applewhite, who is now at Texas with Muschamp.

Every time Applewhite saw him, according to Kirkpatrick, the coach told him: "You ain't nothing."

Kirkpatrick was puzzled. This was not the way others had recruited him. And it clashed with Kirkpatrick's view of himself.

This is a kid, after all, who hears "Deion Sanders" in his head when he gets his hands on an interception. He's cocky like Sanders, too. He believes he is the best on every field he steps on.

He usually is. But Applewhite wasn't there to join his fan club.

"I was like `Why are you dogging me out?' but he kept saying it," Kirkpatrick said. "He finally told me the reason he kept saying it was because every player ain't nothing until they make it. He was right. I haven't done a thing yet. He said it, and I saw he was telling me what I needed to hear."

Inspirational game:

The prep coaches of Birmingham believe the recruiting world has pegged the right prospect.

Hewitt-Trussville coach Hal Riddle detailed a play last year when one of his fastest guys caught a pass going full speed near the 50 and had 15 to 20 yards on everyone. Kirkpatrick took off from about where hot dogs were being sold and caught the runner at the goal line.

"We thought we had it easy," Riddle recalled. "We watched it a couple of times (on video) and decided we didn't need to see that play anymore. If we wanted to see it again, we could watch it on Sundays."

That thought parallels a football dream that burns in Kirkpatrick. Not long after Dill became pregnant, Charles took his son to New Orleans for some unplug-from-it-all time. Dre was at his lowest then.

They wound up around the Superdome right before the Saints were to play the Carolina Panthers.

"Dre begged me to go," Charles recalled. "It was his first pro football game."

Charles paid a pricey sum for a front-row seat. Dre calls it a "VIP seat." Charles could buy only one ticket. So Dre went in alone.

He soaked up every touchdown along with the spray of adult beverages from reveling fans.

"They all got into the alcohol and got wild cheering their team," Dre said. "I saw Julius Peppers make a big hit and it was like the crowd lifted me up, there was so much energy after that hit."

Charles said his son walked out of that game an energized young man.

"That game and that ticket got me back where I needed to be. I was no longer sick about where my life was going. I could still steer it and I wanted to steer it to playing in the NFL."

Coaches and teachers who argue against a young athlete putting all his eggs in the professional football carton may chide such talk. But it's hard to argue with the results here, considering what he does on the field and off. He already has a 17 on his ACT and a 2.9 grade-point average at Gadsden City.

"I left that game knowing I had to make it all the way," Kirkpatrick said. "That was the way for me. That was my goal and it was what I needed to see to get my life back on track."